The Tent on the Beach and Others - Part 4, from Volume IV., the Works of Whittier: Personal Poems

John Greenleaf Whittier

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• Publié par: onni
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 31
• Langue: English

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Project Gutenberg EBook, Tent on the Beach and Others Part 4, From Volume IV., The Works of Whittier: Personal Poems #29 in our series by John Greenleaf Whittier

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Title: The Tent on the Beach and Others Part 4, From Volume IV., The Works of Whittier: Personal Poems

Author: John Greenleaf Whittier

Release Date: December 2005 [EBook #9584] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on October 18, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG   EBOOK, TENT ON THE BEACH, PART 4 ***   

This eBook was produced by David Widger [[e-mail]]

THE TENT ON THE BEACH

BY

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

CONTENTS:

THE TENT ON THE BEACH. PRELUDE THE TENT ON THE BEACH THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH THE GRAVE BY THE LAKE THE BROTHER OF MERCY THE CHANGELING THE MAIDS OF ATTITASH KALLUNDBORG CHURCH THE CABLE HYMN THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL THE PALATINE ABRAHAM DAVENPORT THE WORSHIP OF NATURE

THE TENT ON THE BEACH

It can scarcely be necessary to name as the two companions whom I reckoned with myself in this poetical picnic, Fields the lettered magnate, and Taylor the free cosmopolite. The long line of sandy beach which defines almost the whole of the New Hampshire sea-coast is especially marked near its southern extremity, by the salt- meadows of Hampton. The Hampton River winds through these meadows, and the reader may, if he choose, imagine my tent pitched near its mouth, where also was the scene of the Wreck of Rivermouth . The green bluff to the northward is Great Boar's Head; southward is the Merrimac, with Newburyport lifting its steeples above brown roofs and green trees on banks.

I would not sin, in this half-playful strain, — Too light perhaps for serious years, though born Of the enforced leisure of slow pain,— Against the pure ideal which has drawn My feet to follow its far-shining gleam. A simple plot is mine: legends and runes Of credulous days, old fancies that have lain Silent, from boyhood taking voice again, Warmed into life once more, even as the tunes That, frozen in the fabled hunting-horn, Thawed into sound:—a winter fireside dream Of dawns and-sunsets by the summer sea, Whose sands are traversed by a silent throng Of voyagers from that vaster mystery Of which it is an emblem;—and the dear

Memory of one who might have tuned my song To sweeter music by her delicate ear.

When heats as of a tropic clime Burned all our inland valleys through, Three friends, the guests of summer time, Pitched their white tent where sea-winds blew. Behind them, marshes, seamed and crossed With narrow creeks, and flower-embossed, Stretched to the dark oak wood, whose leafy arms Screened from the stormy East the pleasant inland farms.

At full of tide their bolder shore Of sun-bleached sand the waters beat; At ebb, a smooth and glistening floor They touched with light, receding feet. Northward a 'green bluff broke the chain Of sand-hills; southward stretched a plain Of salt grass, with a river winding down, Sail-whitened, and beyond the steeples of the town,

Whence sometimes, when the wind was light And dull the thunder of the beach, They heard the bells of morn and night Swing, miles away, their silver speech. Above low scarp and turf-grown wall They saw the fort-flag rise and fall; And, the first star to signal twilight's hour, The lamp-fire glimmer down from the tall light- house tower.

The rested there, esca ed awhile

     From cares that wear the life away, To eat the lotus of the Nile And drink the poppies of Cathay,— To fling their loads of custom down, Like drift-weed, on the sand-slopes brown, And in the sea waves drown the restless pack Of duties, claims, and needs that barked upon their track.

One, with his beard scarce silvered, bore A ready credence in his looks, A lettered magnate, lording o'er An ever-widening realm of books. In him brain-currents, near and far, Converged as in a Leyden jar; The old, dead authors thronged him round about, And Elzevir's gray ghosts from leathern graves looked out.

He knew each living pundit well, Could weigh the gifts of him or her, And well the market value tell Of poet and philosopher. But if he lost, the scenes behind, Somewhat of reverence vague and blind, Finding the actors human at the best, No readier lips than his the good he saw confessed.

His boyhood fancies not outgrown, He loved himself the singer's art; Tenderly, gently, by his own He knew and judged an author's heart. No Rhadamanthine brow of doom

Bowed the dazed pedant from his room; And bards, whose name is legion, if denied, Bore off alike intact their verses and their pride.

Pleasant it was to roam about The lettered world as he had, done, And see the lords of song without Their singing robes and garlands on. With Wordsworth paddle Rydal mere, Taste rugged Elliott's home-brewed beer, And with the ears of Rogers, at fourscore, Hear Garrick's buskined tread and Walpole's wit once more.

And one there was, a dreamer born, Who, with a mission to fulfil, Had left the Muses' haunts to turn The crank of an opinion-mill, Making his rustic reed of song A weapon in the war with wrong, Yoking his fancy to the breaking-plough That beam-deep turned the soil for truth to spring and grow.

Too quiet seemed the man to ride The winged Hippogriff Reform; Was his a voice from side to side To pierce the tumult of the storm? A silent, shy, peace-loving man, He seemed no fiery partisan To hold his way against the public frown, The ban of Church and State, the fierce mob's hounding down.

For while he wrought with strenuous will The work his hands had found to do, He heard the fitful music still Of winds that out of dream-land blew. The din about him could not drown What the strange voices whispered down; Along his task-field weird processions swept, The visionary pomp of stately phantoms stepped:

The common air was thick with dreams,— He told them to the toiling crowd; Such music as the woods and streams Sang in his ear he sang aloud; In still, shut bays, on windy capes, He heard the call of beckoning shapes, And, as the gray old shadows prompted him, To homely moulds of rhyme he shaped their legends grim.

He rested now his weary hands, And lightly moralized and laughed, As, tracing on the shifting sands A burlesque of his paper-craft, He saw the careless waves o'errun His words, as time before had done, Each day's tide-water washing clean away, Like letters from the sand, the work of yesterday.

And one, whose Arab face was tanned By tropic sun and boreal frost, So travelled there was scarce a land Or people left him to exhaust, In idling mood had from him hurled The oor s ueezed oran e of the world,

And in the tent-shade, as beneath a palm, Smoked, cross-legged like a Turk, in Oriental calm.

The very waves that washed the sand Below him, he had seen before Whitening the Scandinavian strand And sultry Mauritanian shore. From ice-rimmed isles, from summer seas Palm-fringed, they bore him messages; He heard the plaintive Nubian songs again, And mule-bells tinkling down the mountain-paths of Spain.

His memory round the ransacked earth On Puck's long girdle slid at ease; And, instant, to the valley's girth Of mountains, spice isles of the seas, Faith flowered in minster stones, Art's guess At truth and beauty, found access; Yet loved the while, that free cosmopolite, Old friends, old ways, and kept his boyhood's dreams in sight.

Untouched as yet by wealth and pride, That virgin innocence of beach No shingly monster, hundred-eyed, Stared its gray sand-birds out of reach; Unhoused, save where, at intervals, The white tents showed their canvas walls, Where brief sojourners, in the cool, soft air, Forgot their inland heats, hard toil, and year-long care.

Sometimes alon the wheel-dee sand

A one-horse wagon slowly crawled, Deep laden with a youthful band, Whose look some homestead old recalled; Brother perchance, and sisters twain, And one whose blue eyes told, more plain Than the free language of her rosy lip, Of the still dearer claim of love's relationship.

With cheeks of russet-orchard tint, The light laugh of their native rills, The perfume of their garden's mint, The breezy freedom of the hills, They bore, in unrestrained delight, The motto of the Garter's knight, Careless as if from every gazing thing Hid by their innocence, as Gyges by his ring.

The clanging sea-fowl came and went, The hunter's gun in the marshes rang; At nightfall from a neighboring tent A flute-voiced woman sweetly sang. Loose-haired, barefooted, hand-in-hand, Young girls went tripping down the sand; And youths and maidens, sitting in the moon, Dreamed o'er the old fond dream from which we wake too soon.

At times their fishing-lines they plied, With an old Triton at the oar, Salt as the sea-wind, tough and dried As a lean cusk from Labrador. Strange tales he told of wreck and storm,— Had seen the sea-snake's awful form, And heard the hosts on Hale 's Isle com lain,